Tim McGraw, Faith Hill announce performances in Las Vegas

Click on this photo to see a gallery of Tim McGraw and Faith Hill through the years. Here, they are shown at the 45th CMA Awards. (Photo: George Walker IV/The Tennessean)

LAS VEGAS - After months of speculation, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill on Tuesday announced plans for series of shows together at The Venetian Las Vegas.

The country star husband and wife will do a 10-weekend run of shows called "Soul2Soul" - named after their highly successful tours - at The Venetian starting Dec. 7. The couple will present four shows a weekend starting Dec. 7-8 in the resort's theater, which seats 1,800 people. Tickets are $95.50-$295.50; VIP packages are available for $1,000. Tickets go on sale on Wednesday in a presale for fan club members and Monday to the general public.

"I'm so excited," said Hill at the press conference to announce the shows. "It's thrilling for us to be part of this extraordinary experience. "We're working on creating a show that's going to be remarkable for our fans but for us as well."

McGraw added, "There's a lot of work left to do but this is a moment in time for us and our fans as well.

"This is a different way to see what we've done in years. We are in the process of building the show now. The production is cutting-edge. We don't want to give too much away."

Hill said the Vegas casino approached the couple about the series of shows, which started coming together in July 2011; McGraw and Hill have not performed on tour in the States together since 2007. The couple indicated that something beyond the 10 planned weekends is something they will all explore.

Hill said that part of the draw was that the resort is working the shows around their children's school schedules.

"The Venetian has been so gracious in working around our schedule and for me that's everything these days," she said. "With three daughters and Tim, that's the only way I'll do anything."

While a note to the media describes this venture as “the biggest entertainment announcement in the history of The Venetian,” performing together is hardly a new spin for one of country music’s royal couples.

McGraw and Hill fell in love in 1996 during McGraw’s Spontaneous Combustion tour. Hill was his opening act. The couple wed several months later on Oct. 6, 1996, in McGraw’s aunt’s backyard in Rayville, La. By that December, they were already expecting their first daughter Gracie, now 15. Two more daughters followed over the years, Maggie, (now almost 14), and Audrey, 10, as did several vocal collaborations and a small handful of successful tours.

The couple has recorded songs together including “It’s Your Love,” “Just to Hear You Say That You Love Me,” "Let's Make Love," "I Need You" and "Like We Never Loved at All." They balanced home life and careers by touring together as a family, often taking their girls on the road with them.

Their popular co-headlining tour, Soul2Soul, first launched in 2000, saw at least two revivals and was the most successful tour in country music history in 2006. However McGraw told "Redbook" in 2007 their daughters weren’t as anxious to spend their days and nights on a tour bus as they once were.

“There were a few little moans about going on the road, so this will probably be the last year we can both go out," McGraw told the magazine. At the time, the girls ranged in age from 5 to 10, and he said, "they're starting to get their friends — they're starting to get their own lives. So that's why we decided, 'Let's go out one more year together, because we might never be able to do it again.’"

Today the Soul2Soul name carries such a recognizable brand that more than a decade after the tour’s first show, the couple elected to give their his and hers fragrances the same name. The scents first hit stores earlier this year.

But their years together haven’t been without personal and professional turmoil. In the mid 2000s, Hill struggled with a slew of public relations debacles that began with a host of personal attacks after she jokingly -- but dramatically -- raised her hands and angrily saying “What?” after Carrie Underwood won female vocalist of the year over her at the CMA Awards in 2006.

A year later, she said the scrutiny that followed “almost killed me.”

"I called my manager and said, 'I'm done. I do not fit into this place here. No one gets me,'” she told The Tennessean in 2007. “I can go to other areas of the world and people get me."

Around the same time, she was also wrapped up in a bit of a retouching scandal when Redbook ran a photo of her on the cover that some felt had been too heavily altered, and there was an incident on stage during the 2007 version of the Soul2Soul tour where Hill drew significant media attention for angrily confronting a female fan from the stage for grabbing McGraw’s crotch during a show. She said she had planned to let the incident go until the woman looked at her like, “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

"At that moment, it was between the girl and me,” Hill said. “I wasn't thinking about the audience at that time. I was not trying to put on a show for everybody."

McGraw has had his share of battles, too. The singer was known for having a quick temper at times but told The Tennessean in 2010 that putting down the bottle had helped him keep that in check.

"There was some legitimate anger and some illegitimate anger, and a lot of times I should have just shut up and sang instead of being worried about what someone said about my wife in the paper, or what someone on a radio station was saying," he said. "I probably had some legitimate gripes that I handled the wrong way. Plus, I drank too much for a while. I've been sober for two years now, and that's done a lot to help me let go of a lot of things.”

Currently the singer is often in the news for his legal battles with former longtime record label Curb Records. McGraw challenged his recording contract in court and last year a judge ruled the singer was free to record for a new label. He signed with Big Machine Records this spring, but the legal battle is ongoing with Curb now claiming that since McGraw’s contract with them wasn’t fulfilled that the new music he recorded for Big Machine should belong to them. The two sides are scheduled go back to court Aug. 17.

But neither Hill’s nor McGraw’s career is confined to just music. Both were less prominent at country radio for a few years with McGraw particularly focused on building his name as an actor. Hill ventured into that world, too, appearing in television shows “Promised Land” and “Touched by an Angel” in 1997 and on the big screen in “The Stepford Wives” in 2004. Her husband’s tv and film credits are more expansive and range from an appearance on the television series “The Jeff Foxworthy Show” in 1997 to movies including “Friday Night Lights” in 2004, “Flicka” in 2006, “Four Christmases” in 2008, 2009’s Academy Award winning family football film “The Blind Side” in which he starred alongside Sandra Bullock, and 2010’s country music drama “Country Strong,” which co-starred Gwyneth Paltrow.

These days, however, McGraw says his country music career has his full attention, and recently, he has been on the road with country touring force Kenny Chesney in the Brothers of the Sun arena tour that came through LP Field this summer. This spring he told The Tennessean he had “two or three films floating around there” but nothing he could commit to.

“It’s juggling act when it comes to that because first and foremost is my music career and I don’t want to go do a film if I can’t completely commit to it and give it everything I’ve got,” he said. “I don’t want to phone anything in. It’s just making time – and not only having time to film the movie but having time to prepare for it as well.”

Given this residency, it seems McGraw may have even less time to focus on his acting. With the commitment to The Venetian Las Vegas, McGraw and Hill join the ranks of other country music stars who have standing gigs in Sin City. Garth Brooks announced his residency at The Wynn in 2009. At the time, it was reported that Brooks’ one-man show would run on weekends 15 weeks a year with the goal of lasting five years. However, Brooks said he had the option to stop at any time as long as he completed his announced shows. (His next events at The Wynn are set for Aug. 17 and 18.)

In addition, Shania Twain released plans for her residency at Caesar’s Palace last year, and it is set to launch this December. Twain is lined up to perform roughly 60 shows a year at Caesar’s Palace over the next two years.

Earlier this year, when asked what he still wanted to accomplish, McGraw said, “to get better.”

“I want to get better at everything I do,” he reiterated. “Musically I want to get better. Live shows I want to get better. Films I want to get better and do bigger and better projects, am just always looking for something that means something to you.”